Positive psychology has boosted interest in the positive as well as the negative emotions that Foreign Language learners experience. The present study examines whether -and to what extent-foreign language enjoyment (FLE) and FL classroom anxiety (FLCA) are linked to a range of learner-internal variables and teacher/classroom-specific variables within one specific educational context. Participants were 189 British high school students learning various FLs. Levels of FLE were linked to higher scores on attitudes towards the FL, the FL teacher, FL use in class, proportion of time spent on speaking, relative standing and stage of development. Lower levels FLCA were linked to higher scores on attitudes towards the FL, relative standing and stage of development. FLCA thus seems less related to teacher and teacher practices than FLE. The pedagogical implication is that teachers should strive to boost FLE rather than worry too much about students' FLCA. Dörnyei and Ryan (2015) pointed out that despite the fact that emotions play a crucial part in our lives, they have been largely "shunned" by Second Language Acquisition (SLA) scholars (p. 9). The authors attribute this to the cognitivist tradition in the field and argue that it is time to overcome the general "emotional deficit" in SLA research. They wonder how as researchers we can "accommodate positive emotions more effectively into our descriptions of learner psychology? " (p. 205). This statement recognizes that the role of positive emotion, although vaguely recognized in the field, still has a long way to traverse before positive emotion assumes the place it deserves (Dulay & Burt, 1977, Gardner, 1985Krashen, 1982;Schumann, 1978) but it is true that it seems to have remained a little bit in the shadows of the vibrant research into negative emotions, mostly foreign language anxiety. The situation may be changing because of the influence of Positive Psychology, the empirical study of how people thrive and flourish. Positive Psychology wants to broaden the general perspective in 1 Pre-print version of the paper (Article first published online: February 17, 2017) Language Teaching Research https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168817692161 2 general psychology with its focus on abnormalities, disorders, and mental illness and the development of ways to reduce pain and learn to cope with negative experiences, in favour of the development of tools to build positive emotions, foster greater engagement, and boost the appreciation of meaning in life and its activities (MacIntyre & Mercer, 2014). Just as the interlanguage paradigm superseded the error analysis tradition in the 1970s, with a move away from an exclusive focus on second language learners' deficits, the Positive Psychology approach advocates a more holistic view on humans, which in SLA terms means moving away from the overwhelming focus on negative emotions (foreign language classroom anxiety -FLCA) to include L2 learners' positive emotions, such as Foreign Language Enjoyment (FLE) (Dewaele & MacIntyre, 2014Dewael...

To investigate the pedagogical effectiveness of oral corrective feedback (CF) on target language development, we conducted a meta-analysis that focused exclusively on 15 classroom-based studies (N = 827). The analysis was designed to investigate whether CF was effective in classroom settings and, if so, whether its effectiveness varied according to (a) types of CF, (b) types and timing of outcome measures, (c) instructional setting (second vs. foreign language classroom), (d) treatment length, and (e) learners’ age. Results revealed that CF had significant and durable effects on target language development. The effects were larger for prompts than recasts and most apparent in measures that elicit free constructed responses. Whereas instructional setting was not identified as a contributing factor to CF effectiveness, effects of long treatments were larger than those of short-to-medium treatments but not distinguishable from those of brief treatments. A simple regression analysis revealed effects for age, with younger learners benefiting from CF more than older learners.

This article reviews research on oral corrective feedback (CF) in second language (L2) classrooms. Various types of oral CF are first identified, and the results of research revealing CF frequency across instructional contexts are presented. Research on CF preferences is then reviewed, revealing a tendency for learners to prefer receiving CF more than teachers feel they should provide it. Next, theoretical perspectives in support of CF are presented and some contentious issues addressed related to the role of learner uptake, the role of instruction, and the overall purpose of CF: to initiate the acquisition of new knowledge or to consolidate already acquired knowledge. A brief review of laboratory studies assessing the effects of recasts is then presented before we focus on classroom studies assessing the effects of different types of CF. Many variables mediate CF effectiveness: of these, we discuss linguistic targets and learners' age in terms of both previous and prospective research. Finally, CF provided by learners and the potential benefits of strategy training for strengthening the role of CF during peer interaction are highlighted

Sixty‐five Japanese learners of English participated in the current study, which investigated the acquisitional value of form‐focused instruction (FFI) with and without corrective feedback (CF) on learners’ pronunciation development. All students received a 4‐hr FFI treatment designed to encourage them to notice and practice the target feature of English /ɹ/ in meaningful discourse, except those in the control group (n= 11), who received comparable instruction but without FFI on English /ɹ/. During FFI, the instructors provided CF only to students in the FFI + CF group (n= 29) by recasting their mispronunciation or unclear pronunciation of /ɹ/, whereas no CF was provided to those in the FFI‐only group (n= 25). Acoustic analyses were conducted on frequency values of the third formant (F3) of English /ɹ/ tokens elicited via pretest and posttest measures targeting familiar items and a generalizability test targeting unfamiliar items. The results showed that: (a) F3 values of the FFI + CF group significantly declined after the intervention, not only at a controlled‐speech level but also a spontaneous‐speech level, regardless of following vowel contexts; (b) change in F3 values of the FFI‐only group and the control group was not statistically significant; and (c) the generalizability of FFI to novel tokens remained unclear.

This study presents a cross‐sectional and longitudinal analysis of how 108 high school students in English as a foreign language (EFL) classrooms enhanced the comprehensibility of their second language (L2) speech according to different motivation, emotion, and experience profiles. Students’ learning patterns were primarily associated with their emotional states (anxiety vs. enjoyment) and secondarily with their motivational dispositions (clear vision of ideal future selves). Students’ anxiety together with weaker Ideal L2 Self related negatively to their performance at the beginning of the project—performance that they had achieved after several years of EFL instruction. Students’ enjoyment together with greater Ideal L2 Self predicted the extent to which they practiced and developed their L2 speech within the 3‐month framework of the project. Results suggest that more frequent L2 use with positive emotions directly impacts acquisition, which may in turn lead to the lessening of negative emotions and better long‐term L2 comprehensibility. Open Practices This article has been awarded an Open Materials badge. Study materials are publicly accessible in the IRIS digital repository at http://www.iris-database.org. Learn more about the Open Practices badges from the Center for Open Science: https://osf.io/tvyxz/wiki.